Some quotes
On the eastern side of Indianapolis, there’s a neighborhood that police used to call the "swamp."
“We wanted to go where people had never heard the name of Jesus,” urban outreach pastor Dale Shaw said. “But we had a blind eye to some of the needs in America.”
“We needed to ‘build bridges of grace that can bear the weight of truth,’ a statement I borrowed from Randy Alcorn,’” lead pastor and TGC Council member Mark Vroegop said.
Holistic investment was needed—everything from job opportunities to education to mothering support to legal aid, all centered around the grace and guidance of the gospel.
The best thing College Park did for Brookside was not try too hard in the early days.
College Park also helped elder David Palmer (Cindy’s husband) start a furniture-making business.
“We think the gospel has the power to light up the whole neighborhood,” Dale Shaw said.
Barb Tait was speaking from experience. “I thought I was going to go help the poor, and the first thing I realized was that I am a broken sinner, and it was my heart that needed to be saved from prejudices and assumptions and selfishness. God exposed me.”
“The contemporary evangelical church is too quick to overlook social issues out of pragmatism, write off social justice as ‘liberal theology,’ and forget that the Bible uses strong words when the poor and disenfranchised are neglected. The ‘though your sins are like scarlet’ issues that will be washed white as snow in Isaiah 1 include failing to seek justice, not correcting oppression, not bringing justice to the fatherless and neglecting to plead the widow’s cause.”
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